USC Football Player Turned Drug, Gambling Crime Lord Released Early

Owen Hanson, the former USC football player who swapped college athletics for notoriety as an online play and drug-trafficking kingpin, was released too soon from a federal prison house this week.

Hanson was sentenced to 21 years inwards belatedly 2017 after pleading hangdog to charges of racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to dispense drugs.

It’s unclear wherefore Hanson, who is currently the content of an Amazon River Sports docuseries from Gospel According to Mark Wahlberg’s production company, is beingness released early.

The motion for the doom reduction is currently under seal. The enjoin granting it cites “extraordinary and compelling reasons.”

Rise of a Criminal Empire

Hanson, now 41, was arrested inwards 2015 inwards an FBI bite that targeted his multimillion-dollar illegal gaming and narcotics empire.

The former USC tight oddment enjoyed a privileged upbringing inward Redondo Beach, Calif. He was popular, charismatic, expensively educated, and seemingly destined for great things. His descent into the morose face began after he began selling performance-enhancing drugs to fellow college athletes.

From there, he graduated to trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and heroin internationally. At the same time, he ran an offshore sports betting situation that employed wild enforcers to pull in gambling debts.

Things began to pin asunder for Hanson when he hooked up with pro risk taker and Las Vegas personality Henry Martyn Robert “RJ” Cipriani, aka “Robin Hood 702.”

Cipriani employs the Robin Hood moniker, linked with the Las Vegas-area dialing code, because he allegedly donates a portion of his gaming profits to large-hearted causes.

But on this occasion, his task was to launder $2.5 meg of Hanson’s do drugs money by play with it, minimally, at the gaming tables of an Aussie casino. But Cipriani blew the lot – purposefully, he claims, because he suspected he was beingness circle upwardly for money laundering.

Modern Clarence Shepard Day Jr. Robin Hood

Cipriani made an anonymous call to Aboriginal Australian authorities to news report the front of a gun inwards a Sydney hotel way linked to Hanson. Then he fled to the U.S.

Instead of a gun, constabulary found a suitcase filled with $700K inwards hard currency inwards the hotel room. When Cipriani got rearwards home, he contacted the FBI.

Before his arrest, Hanson hounded Cipriani with death threats, sending photos of the gambler’s deceased mother’s defaced headstone, along with carrying out videos to Cipriani and his folk members.

Cipriani chose to chafe it inwards on auditory modality of his former tormentor’s release. He told Deadline this hebdomad that he was prepared to proffer Hanson a “beautiful one-bedroom apartment” for discharge for 6 months to aid “Mr. Hanson imbibe rearwards into society, and to help him get under one's skin back up on his feet.”

“From the cobbler's last soul that he’d of all time expect to help inwards life, i wanted to follow that person. i wanted to ‘Pray It Up’ as Mark Wahlberg has suggested,” Cipriani digged.